


Mundanity is Not Meant for Us

by dxggorylives



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Monster healing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 03:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18379979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dxggorylives/pseuds/dxggorylives
Summary: With the threat of the monster dealt with and Eliot back in the driver's seat of his own body, as badly beat up and in need of recovery as that body is, it's down to Margo and Quentin to pick up the pieces.A take on post-4x12 events before they've even happened yet.





	Mundanity is Not Meant for Us

Pain.

One moment he’d been sitting on one of the worn, but comfortably familiar couches in the physical kids’ cottage, flipping through a book researching God knows what in the hopes it would help, and the next… fuck.

It was like the whole entire world disappeared from around him with no warning at all, leaving him suspended in darkness. He panicked, thinking that this might be it and that the monster had killed him. If he was in any right state of mind to be pondering it, he’d be thankful that he’d _panicked_ at the thought of that.

Then it felt like he was being dragged backwards over broken glass, shards cutting deep – lacerating his skin and tearing him apart. He wanted to scream but couldn’t find the breath, only to the register an unbearably searing pain coursing down through his chest that seemed to steal what wasn’t there. The burn engulfed his entire body from the inside out – like he had fire blazing in his veins.

He wasn’t religious in the slightest despite his family’s best efforts, but for a split second he wondered if this was hell. That they were right and that he’d ended up in the fiery pits, despite knowing for a fact that that wasn’t how all this ‘dying’ stuff worked.

He came to all at once, gasping desperately for breath as if he’d had his head held underwater, looking at the dull, overcast sky. Even though his vision swam, everything was _so fucking bright._ It made him wonder how he’d ever believed his ‘happy place’ to be real, it being so muted in comparison to _this_.

His senses were overwhelmed and discombobulated, the ringing in his ears preventing him from concentrating for too long on any one particular thought. All he noticed was that he was lying on something cold and hard under his back, raised off the ground, and his shirt clung to him with an uncomfortably sticky wetness similar to the one he felt running down his face from his nose, and… the distant but muffled sounds of voices and footsteps hurtling towards him.

Frantic hands grabbed his face, soft and familiar but bloodied by the action, and though he couldn’t see her properly he knew in his heart it was Margo. She was talking to him, distant tone sounding frayed and desperate, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

Suddenly an intense fatigue and dizziness swept over him and he was powerless against the tide of it, letting his eyes roll back in his head, and the darkness claim him once more.

 

 

Mundanity felt foreign to them now.

Granted, it had for a while now, and it was almost certain that there was bound to be another earth-shattering global catastrophe under way that required their attention sooner rather than later. There always was. The Library was quickly becoming a well-organised authoritarian regime, the head of which with a God complex the size of Mount fucking Olympus and the means to satisfy it as well.

But right now – they finally had a moment to regroup. A second to catch their breaths after the showdown with the monster and his sister, which had culminated in the rather more bloody and violent exorcism than they’d intended. But for their efforts it meant they _finally_ had Eliot back – real Eliot, not murderous child-God ‘Darth Eliot’ who most of them (especially herself and Quentin) had a hard time looking in the eye for fear they’d end up conflating the two. She didn’t want memories of that _thing_ anywhere near the cherished memories she had of _him_.

But it was dumb in hindsight, because the second Eliot’s consciousness returned to the forefront on top of the stone altar Margo _saw_ him instantaneously. There was no way she could ever mistake one for the other.

She had taken a cautionary few steps back after engaging the axes and the monster was forced from Eliot’s body, but the second the convulsing stopped she almost tripped over herself in haste as she ran to him. And his eyes were open. _His_ eyes.

_The eyes, amber and shining with strength and warmth, that had bore into hers so many times as he told her he loved her. That he was proud of her. That he believed in her._

_‘I’ve known what you truly are since the first day we met. Long may you reign’._

“El! El…! Eliot!”

His name scraped the back of her throat as she’d yelled it, and for half a second, she caught a glimpse of her best friend when she reached him. The real him. Her heart engaged before her brain as she grabbed his face, anchoring himself and in some way soothing a cynical part of herself that wanted her to believe it wasn’t true and that it hadn’t worked. He was there; right in front of her.

Or he _was_. Until he slipped through her fingers and passed out and didn’t wake up for two days.

That first night they had Eliot back, Margo and Quentin both stayed with him through the night. For an irrationally hot-headed and protective instant she had wanted to question why Quentin felt so strongly about sitting in, argue that she had it covered. But it burned out as quickly as it had flashed, as it was clear to anyone how much Q had been hurting and agonising over all of this these past few weeks. The emotional abuse Q had taken from the monster wearing Eliot’s skin, taunting him and slobbering all over him, would’ve driven Margo to insanity. She didn’t blame him for wanting the same type of comfort from having Eliot back that she did.

She had her suspicions about the nature of that comfort and what type of emotions they sprang from, but she relegated them to the back of her mind. _That_ was for another, less pivotal day.

_“I’m staying with him too” Quentin asserted, though the crack in his voice gave away his exhaustion._

_Margo regarded him from her position on the bed with an unreadable look. In a blink her face softened._

_“Then get in here and close the door – you’re letting in a draught”_

Margo lay on her side next to Eliot on the bed, one hand circled around his forearm. Like the sensation would reverberate somewhere inside him and he’d know she was there. Quentin watched on, curled up in an armchair he’d dragged closer to the side of the bed. He’d spent some time nervously fidgeting with his fingers, but eventually he just pulled his arms around himself and stayed that way.

Neither would verbally admit it, but they were both equally as on-edge as each other, watching Eliot’s bandaged chest rise and fall, affirming with themselves over and over that he was still breathing. He was alive. The monster hadn’t just fucking trashed the joint and ripped him apart on its way out. Every breath individually helped loosen the anxiety that had settled and taken up root in her chest ever since she’d heard there was a fighting chance that they even _could_ get him back – but that it was down to her to make it happen.

Margo didn’t know if Q slept at all that night, but when she woke up in the early hours of the morning from her uneasy couple hours of nap, he had a book in his lap but looked just as bone-weary and exhausted as he had before she fell asleep.

Feeling her eyes on him, his gaze lifted from the text, and met hers. After very brief, silent exchange, Margo cocked her head and signalled him to join them on the bed. _Just like old times_ , she thought – and its maybe the first time she’s thought something even slightly humorous in the last couple of days. And it was a welcome fucking change, even if it only managed to lift her spirit momentarily. It was something.

He hesitated, but the decision to abandon the book and move onto the bed appeared to be an easy one. Quentin slid himself into the space on Eliot’s free side. Margo watched him curiously. With a shaking hand, he tucked a stray curl that sat errant on Eliot’s face and gently tucked it behind his ear, as if he was some kid daring to touch a delicate glass ornament in a department store.

The air around them was still, and silent, and for some reason prompted Margo to break it.

“He isn’t going to break” she offered, her voice gravelly from non-use.

Quentin looked at her and blinked hard, before his eyes were inevitably drawn back to the other man’s prone form. A look of quiet, but melancholy affection passed over his face and his hand moved from where it had been floating at the side of Eliot’s face, and rested in the space between his shoulder and his chest. Careful to avoid the wounds.

That’s when Q’s eyes, blood-shot and ringed by viscerally dark circles, finally fluttered shut and he actually looked somewhat at peace.

 

It was much the same for the next day, each of the two of them occasionally shifting positions, leaving the room when needs’ must (no matter how much they loathed to), and Julia periodically popping her head round the door to bring them food. Eliot didn’t change. Or move. He just kept breathing…

_Inhale,_

_Exhale._

Margo could handle that so long as he was alive, but if she was being honest with herself, she was growing somewhat… _antsy_ (read: impatient) to talk to him. Hear _his_ voice audibly confirm their assumptions that he was in fact okay.

At one point Q moved to pick the book back up off the chair, but to his surprise was interrupted in the action.

“If you’re gonna read, read out loud” she asked, tone guarded but… soft in a way he hadn’t heard in quite a while. It briefly teleported him back to a time long ago, of emotion bottles and grad school and that night. Things seemed so much less tangled and complicated back then, as much as it really hadn’t seemed that way at the time. Nostalgia filled his chest, but for once it didn’t make him _sad_ , per se. Just… contemplative.

So, he read aloud to the two of them. Margo was surprised at how she relaxed into the story, curling up a little more comfortably by Eliot’s side as the tension she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding melted away somewhat with the tone of Q’s voice as he told the story.

It was the morning going into the third day after another night that Quentin clearly hadn’t slept properly, and Margo insisted in an almost annoyingly ‘big sisterly’ way that he go to his own bedroom and have a proper sleep, in a room that wasn’t so emotionally charged and liable to distract him.

“He’s fine” she insisted firmly “I’ll come wake you if anything changes”

Quentin clearly grappled with the idea for a minute, before visibly giving in. A) he knew deep down that she was right, and B) when it comes to Margo, when she adopts certain tones of voice he’s grown accustomed to noticing, it’s clear to anyone that she means business and not for being argued with. No matter how much the stubbornness welling in his chest wanted him to stand his ground and argue back a bit more.

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart” she replied, in that sarcastically mimicking way - but with an edge of gleanable sincerity that marginally put Q’s mind at rest. Marginally.

That was a couple of hours ago now, and Margo had sat upright against the headboard, propped up by a couple of large, plush pillows. _Shit, this place was swanky._

She knew the idea of sleep was futile, so she’d flipped on the TV that hung against the wall facing the bed. Christ, she’d been in Fillory playing High King for so long she’d almost forgotten what television looked like. _Pictures move? And speak? Oh how fucking revolutionary._

And how far behind she was on Game of Thrones. Actually – now that she thought about it, it was becoming harder to distinguish what felt like real life and what felt like a foreign country between modern Earth and the… rustic (read: _medieval_ ) “” _charm_ ”” of Fillory.

She flicked and flicked through hundreds of mind-numbing channels before settling on the age-old classic ‘Dr Phil’. Don’t judge – it was the best pick of a bad bunch and what could hurt about listening to someone else’s much inaner and less life-and-all-of-magic-kind- threatening problems. Give her cheating husbands and paternity tests that turn into Wrestle-Mania _please_.

She couldn’t focus on it though – her mind was drifting (she was surprised it even had the capacity and creativity to _do_ that shit on so little sleep).

It was the utter plushness of the room that seemed to prompt it. This Marina chick who Kady had somehow stolen this apartment from really knew her shit when it came to New York City real estate. They’d taken up camp in the master bedroom, and it alone probably would’ve fitted both Eliot’s and Margo’s old rooms at the cottage _together_. The furniture was new, paintings and décor bland but ultimately tasteful, and it was immaculate enough to give the image of a showroom.

 _No_ – a fancy as shit hotel room Downtown. Like that one place Eliot and Margo had scoped out sometime in their first year at Brakebills whilst they were out shopping and simultaneously cutting class. It reeked of the kind of exclusivity that would not lend itself well to a couple of grad students, nor their bank accounts. But they’d gotten creative with their spellwork and blagged themselves the funds (at least… _seemingly_ – which was all that mattered), completing the story with dramatic, colourful backstories, played out dramatically for extra effect with artful expertise, right down to the most minute detail.

 _Estella Armani_ (not _that_ Armani) _– daughter of a wealthy investment banker and depressed, pill-popping ex-movie starlet who ran away from her arranged marriage to the deathly boring son of her father’s evil business partner with the penniless but supremely gorgeous and passionate bastard son of a British Lord who’s came to America to ‘find himself’…_

Margo smiled at the memory. Eliot had kept up that ridiculous fucking accent the whole way through their ‘performance’. The guys at the front desk probably didn’t give a shit but oh well, they were amusing themselves, and had collapsed into each other belly-laughing all the way up to the room ‘til they were sipping their $500 champagne.

Automatically, her hand reached out and closed around Eliot’s bigger, slightly calloused one where it lay on the bed in the space between them.

The spark of happy nostalgia dimmed though, but the hint of warmth that it left still sat in her chest and gave her some semblance of peace, and hope to get through the next however long they’d be stuck in this limbo.

They were in limbo, but the feeling of his hand in hers grounded her.

She turned her attention back to the TV and watched mindlessly for maybe an hour longer, happy to let her attention be swept up in someone else’s problems that she wasn’t _at all_ connected to for a change.

Compared to the last few days of stormy, overcast, grey skies it was turning out to be a nice morning; the curtains were drawn shut but were sheer enough that the late Spring sun filtered through and cast the room alight. It felt warm. It dusted the cobwebs away and everything was still, blurred only by the buzz of the television.

Until what felt like the absolute impossible happened. A weak, croaky voice emanated from the other side of the bed.

“Bambi _, really_ … Dr Phil?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi there!! this is my first time writing for the magicians fandom after having gotten swept away by it and falling in love with all of these characters. particularly these three. and my heart was in need of some soft recovery and recuperation after all of this monster stuff. margo, q, and el all deserve soft cuddles and each other!!
> 
> obviously since this is my first work for this fandom i apologise if it sounds ooc in any way, as i'm still trying to get to trips with the characters' 'voices' - hopefully they'll develop the more they write!! also on account of this being my first 'magicians' work i'd really appreciate any and all comments/constructive criticism.
> 
> this is part one of a two-part series so i hope you enjoy and want to stick around for part two!! thanks so much!!

**Author's Note:**

> hi there!! this is my first time writing for the magicians fandom after having gotten swept away by it and falling in love with all of these characters. particularly these three. and my heart was in need of some soft recovery and recuperation after all of this monster stuff. margo, q, and el all deserve soft cuddles and each other!!
> 
> obviously since this is my first work for this fandom i apologise if it sounds ooc in any way, as i'm still trying to get to trips with the characters' 'voices' - hopefully they'll develop the more they write!! also on account of this being my first 'magicians' work i'd really appreciate any and all comments/constructive criticism.
> 
> this is part one of a two-part series so i hope you enjoy and want to stick around for part two!! thanks so much!!


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